What if the relentless pursuit of a meaningful life has quietly become one of the most sophisticated forms of modern suffering?
‘The question was not whether life had meaning but whether I was doing enough to find it’; this is what I used to believe. Now I think that conviction captures the hegemony of our time. Having a plan, purpose, or intention is an obligation rather than a gift. A life without self-actualisation is not merely discouraged but treated as a moral failure.
Our family and society, believing they have the best intentions for us, pass on immense pressure. Aristotle suggests that a thriving life is a meaningful one, shaped towards moral excellence and the continual development of human potential. Viktor Frankl argues that the search for meaning is not simply self-reflective freedom but an important contributing factor to human survival. His logotherapy was rooted in the ruins of a concentration camp, where he watched people endure the unendurable and survive the unsurvivable as long as they could answer why. These ideas cannot be dismissed: they are intense, significant, and reflective. But somewhere between philosophical discussion and self-help writing, something lost its depth.
Nowadays, meaning is not an exploration but a deliverable. We are expected to discover our passion by 22, leave a long-lasting impact by 35, and curate a life that can be summarised in a LinkedIn bio. What used to be a deeply private and personal purpose becomes a public project or achievement that must be photographed on the way. Aristotle’s serious moral philosophy is now turned into a vibe, something visually appealing but shallow. Frankl’s hard-won insight has been shifted into a mere productivity framework.
At this point, Albert Camus becomes unexpectedly useful. Camus was convinced that life did not come with built-in meaning. He believed that the universe was unconcerned, and the response to this indifference was not dismay but the act of resistance. In Camus’s opinion, the most gracious thing a person can do is to keep painting the blank canvas that life gave him, keep creating, and build anyway. Instead of resolving the struggle between the silence of the world and the human’s desire for clarity, the absurd hero lives in it.
Camus recognised that not everyone needs a grand narrative to live a flourishing life, but the most meaningful lives belong to people who never once ponder whether the life they are living is meaningful; they derive their significance from being in the moment, participating in ordinary human tasks and responsibilities. Our culture often refuses to understand this insight.
The problem with enforced meaning is that it reframes an ordinary contentment into a failure. If you do not have a direction and your life is not clearly defined, you are seen as lost. If you are not working to build something purposeful, you are assumed to be wasting time. Meanwhile, the consumer culture is always ready to offer a course, coaching, or an approach to fix that deficiency. The anxiety this system instills is not accidental, but it is the product.
I’m against the regimentation of meaning but not the meaning itself. Frankl was right that meaning can hold us together through suffering. Aristotle was right that a life grounded in virtue is worth living. But no one ever suggests that life without a grand purpose or narrative is deficient. We are the ones who put that cruelty upon us, a modern idea cloaked in the rhetoric of self-realisation.
The question might not be about the purpose but about what I deeply care about on another mundane Tuesday without an audience. The straightforward answer is that living your life is worth far more than finding an answer through a well-designed vision board.
Camus envisioned Sisyphus beaming. It was not because the giant stone reached the top, because it never did, but he was happy for his own struggle. Perhaps we can also permit ourselves to live without booking for some grand project or purpose and realise that living our lives fully, too, is enough.